


Haunted House

by Daniscats



Series: The Incredible Story of Captain Shepard and the Love that Saved the Galaxy! Drabbles and Misc [17]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 14:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20875718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daniscats/pseuds/Daniscats
Summary: Part of the Fictober challenge on the Facebook ME fan fic writer's page. The prompt for today was 'it's a scream', day 2. It also contains the prompt for day 5, 'ghost'.#MEFFictober2019





	Haunted House

"I don't even get the concept, Shepard." Liara continued folding clothes as Shepard stood behind her trying to persuade the stubborn asari. "There is no such thing as a haunted anything and even if there were, why would someone want to deliberately visit one of these places to be harassed by things that shouldn't be there and cannot be fought against?" 

"Because it's fun!", Shepard objected. "Not the way you say it but going to a haunted house is great fun this time of year. Benezia will love it. She'll be scared but not too scared. And how do you know that ghosts aren't real? Don't some asari religions believe in the soul and spirits?" 

"Some of the older, now mostly defunct religions, espoused the concept of a literal soul and a literal afterlife but the most dominant one, siara, does not propose the existence of individual souls and a physical afterlife but rather proposes that our energy is all part of one universal soul if you will. Regardless of how you envision this energy and this soul, it definitely does not include 'ghosts' who are the spirits of the deceased who now hang around trying to scare the living for amusement." 

"Says you! That's the great thing about it. We don't know that there aren't ghosts! No one really knows what happens when we die because no one has ever come back from death before..." 

Liara briefly turned around to give Shepard The Look™. 

"Okay, I kind of came back from the dead but not really! What happens after we die is still a mystery to me. Anything could happen!" 

Liara put down the shirt she was folding and turned fully to look at Shepard, leaning her hip against the table she had just been working on and crossing her arms. 

"You were not alive for two years, is that correct Shepard?" 

"So they tell me. I will only admit that I was unconscious for two years. I could have just been peacefully sleeping in a coma for those two years." 

"I saw you. You weren't." 

"But I could have been. You cannot prove that I was really dead." 

"Actually, I can", Liara brought up her omni-tool. "You were legally and medically dead by any of the established galactic standards. Would you like to see the thousands of pages of records that I retained from the Lazarus Project." 

"No! I do not! Do you really want to go there, Liara? It's all irrelevant anyway! I'm not trying to debate the existence of spirits with you, I just think it would be fun to go to a make-believe haunted house!" 

"As opposed to a real haunted house? And during this time that you were deceased", Liara was not about to be denied her point, "did you find yourself outside of your body, floating around?" 

Shepard sighed. "Not that I remember." 

"And do you remember having any urges to try to float outside your body so that you could go into the homes of the living to rattle chains and knock over glasses?" 

"Liara! It's just for fun! Who cares if ghosts don't exist?" 

"Let's say that there are a trillion living intelligent beings in our galaxy at any given time, just to simplify the math, and perhaps a half-billion average lifetimes since the galaxy was created. So many species live stunted lives, after all. That would mean that there 5 sextillion souls or spirits floating around everywhere, on every past and present habitable planet. But then do they even need to be on a planet or any kind of solid satellite? Too bad we couldn't have recruited them for our fight against the reapers. Instead of chains, we could have equipped these invisible, un-killable spectral warriors with cannon and sat back and watched the carnage from safety. Phew-phew!" 

"Very funny, Liara." 

"And let's see...because of our voluntarily low birth rates, there was maybe an average of 6 billion asari on Thessia at any given era going back to the advent of the modern asari which was maybe around 20,000 average life spans ago so there would be maybe 12 trillion ghosts bumping around this planet and counting? Way above our planet's maximum carrying capacity! Good thing they don't eat much!" 

"If you really didn't want to go, you could have just said so." Shepard started moving away from the laundry room and her bondmate, who was seemingly enjoying herself just way too much. "Maybe *I* will just bring *my* child to it and *we* will leave you here!" 

"Oops, sorry Vaesa, I didn't see there." Liara made an exaggerated movement as if moving around an invisible someone. "But then I wouldn't because you are a ghost. Just you and the 17,000 other ghosts who probably live here given the housing constraints in post-War Thessia." 

"Nope. You are officially uninvited now." 

"Emorara!" Liara followed after Shepard now, trying not to smile as she did. "Stop touching Shepard like that! She's my bondmate!" 

"Tell Emorara I might be interested." 

"What was that Matriarch Leeazo?" Liara dramatically cupped her hand around her auditory canal. "I should go to Shepard's haunted house? Shepard, I have to go now." 

"And why is that?" Shepard turned around and waited patiently for Liara's joke. 

"This is Matriarch Leeazo." Liara pointed her arm to her left. "She is one of the wisest and most respected asari who ever lived. She wrote some of our earliest and most influential philosophical texts. She has been dead for over 26,000 years but now she is living in our coffee pot." 

"Well, at least she has good taste in beverages. And what did this great thinker say to change your mind? That you should honor your bondmate by indulging in her interests for the sake of unity?" 

"No. She just said it's a scream." 

"Really? An asari from, what did you say, 26,000 years ago used a human phrase like that?" 

"Yes, Matriarch?" Liara leaned to her left to listen more closely to her invisible wise woman. "She says that's she's been hanging out with the human ghosts that now have substantial numbers on Thessia. She says that she thinks humans are awesome but thinks that you got really lucky that I agreed to bond with you." 

"Of course she did." 


End file.
